Tories elect ‘Blair-lite’ leader

NEW LABOUR has been stealing Tory policies for well over a decade but
for the last few months the Tories have been cloning copies of Tony
Blair to choose yet another new leader.

Jane James

Even so, to elect a leader of the Tory Party who is untested,
recently unknown and relatively new to the House of Commons is a sign of
desperation for a party that will have been out of power for 17 years if
they lose the next election.

While many Tory members may have preferred David Davis, his co-runner
in the campaign, they voted for David Cameron as the candidate more
likely to appeal to the electorate in order to stand a chance of their
party winning an election.

Most people would be hard pushed to think what any of his policies
are. His campaign speeches criticised many of the Labour government’s
failings while proposing the same policies.

His speech at Tory Party conference said that "one fifth of children
leave primary school unable to write properly" and "there are far fewer
children from state schools going to our best universities. And it’s
getting worse". Yet his manifesto calls for the socially divisive
policies of increased autonomy for schools and promised to "banish the
‘progressive’ theories" in education.

His programme on health is "Real Foundation hospitals and the right
for any provider (read big business) to supply health care." The tax and
benefit system, says Cameron, should reward families and the married
while the voluntary sector should be used to solve problems in the
community.

He is portrayed as a ‘normal’ family man which is far from the truth.
He recalls his outdoor pursuits in childhood including walking and
‘shooting with an airgun’. Educated at Eton and Oxford he worked for the
Tory Party, then got a job as Head of Corporate Affairs for Carlton TV.
His house in London is worth £1.2 million.

Tory ‘moderniser’

CAMERON SAYS that he wants to lead a "modern compassionate
Conservative Party" and that the party needs "an intellectual revolution
on a scale not seen since the days of Margaret Thatcher and Keith
Joseph."

The Tory Party has lost the last three general elections and its poll
ratings have not shifted from 33% despite all the media coverage on the
leadership election. Cameron promises to modernise the party and win
votes from the wider electorate.

Claiming that he cares about families struggling to provide for their
children, poor housing, and the state of education shows that Cameron
supporters recognise that they have to appear to be addressing these
concerns if they are to persuade the wider electorate to vote for a Tory
party still haunted by the Thatcher years.

But Cameron will have to tread carefully between modernising the
party and upsetting the dinosaurs in the party and those core Tory
voters who support right-wing, reactionary ideas on Europe and asylum.

He has already made it clear that he wants the party to pull out of
the right-of-centre coalition in the European Parliament because it
accepts an ‘ever closer union’. If Cameron’s victory strengthens the
party’s modernising wing, the possibility of a right-wing reactionary
split from the party could grow.

Some of the new young modernisers around Cameron even have social
links with their New Labour counterparts and Cameron has already said
he’ll vote with Blair against Labour backbenchers on the proposals to
attack education.

Even if there is only minimal differences that people can spot
between Tories and New Labour, as Blair’s unpopularity grows and Brown
champions ever more neo-liberal policies the next election could be a
closer contest.

Labour, the Tories and the LibDems, though, are capitalist parties
putting the interests of big business before those of working-class
people despite their slick speeches. What is missing is a party
representing the interests of working-class people which could offer a
real alternative.